I recently returned from a trip to NYC. The trip went well and included a bit of networking with the local Silicon Alley community. The nice part about plane travel is that during some legs of the trip, you are forced to disconnect from the Internet and get info the old fashion way, by reading paper docs.

While reading through a few mags, I read a great article that directly answered some issues that have been plaguing some local startup founders that I know. If founders get only one thing out of the article by Jeffrey Bussgang titled “The Insider’s Guide to Venture Capital Financing“, they should get this: know your numbers cold.

You are talking to numbers guys and asking for their money. They may not be able to tell if you are an expert on tech since that is not their strength, but they will be able to tell if you are an expert on your numbers. If you are not, why would they want to invest with someone who does not understand the importance of numbers in business?

If you can’t understand or learn your numbers cold, you MUST bring in a partner that does and can present this critical part of your pitch to the investors.

Tags: financing, venture capital

This entry was posted on Monday, July 19th, 2010 at 1:19 pm and is filed under Business Lessons. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.